Chiron – Some Thoughts

Astrologers are often fascinated by the planetoid Chiron. Non astrologers are also fascinated by the themes it represents of the wounded healer. Chiron was only discovered in 1977 which was already a few years after I started to do astrology. Here are some thought on the symbolic significance of Chiron in an astrology chart. To my mind these things are most pronounced for everyone around the time of the Chiron return age 49 – 51. But over a lifetime some people are much more attuned to this heavenly body while others don’t even notice it. pain? One thing is for certain Chiron may be the wounded healer but it is so much more than the wound. Possibly it is the wound that we all have just because we were born. Chiron represents the capability we all have to understand the endless pouring forth of wisdom that comes from our vain and successful attempts to heal our wounds. Generally only once we stop trying to fix what is not actually broken. Chiron is associated with shamanic perception. Not the peak experience we might have through that kind of contact because for those of us who are embodied a peak experience is not the same as a healing. The peak experience which opens a person to the healing journey must be sorted through and integrated into a life for years afterward. For while it is possible to be obsessed with an experience of breakthrough but eventually it gets blurry and it is not possible to travel back and recreate the experience. What is left seems like pieces of a puzzle. On a bad day, when nothing is working, if the puzzle piece fits into the puzzle a person may be filled with grace and gratitude because the whole damn mess shifts and the suffering seems to make sense. Sometimes what seems most important is the way the pieces of the puzzle help us find our center but other times we might understand that the actual gift, the bigger gift is the awareness that this can happen at all. When Chiron is positively present we may be stunned and reverent to realize the deep, interconnected fabric underlying all consciousness. This is how Chiron teaches us. Through our own portal. it is through our own sense of suffering that we are expanded to see the basic nature of suffering itself and then we are free. This is quite difficult to communicate to people when reading an astrological chart. It can seem too abstract when all a person wants is to feel better. Truth is: All wisdom arises out of difficulty. ‘every happiness is the Child of a suffering It did not think it could Endure. And Daphne – becoming a Laurel dares you to become The wind. Rilke Daniel G. says in his wonderful book. That healing trauma is in fact one of the most potent of evolutionary forces because through healing we become compassionate and that is our greatest potential. So to be human is to know that you will eventually (at least by the age of 50) come to Chiron’s cave. And there you will be asked to stop trying to fix what isn’t broken but to live. Simply to live. Astrologers often get fixated on Chiron. And the rest of the world – certainly at the moment – can fixate on how hard it all is and how we suffer. We can inadvertently fall in love with our wounds. We mean to heal them but we identify with them, we identify them and we in some strange way strengthen them. This is not what Chiron is about. If you want to love the teachings that’s one thing but you don’t need to love the teacher in the same way.